Simple Acid Digestion Procedure for the Determination of Total Mercury in Plankton by Cold Vapor Atomic Fluorescence Spectroscopy.

Plankton, at the bottom of the food web, play a central role in the entry of mercury into the aquatic biota. To investigate their role in mercury uptake, reliable analytical procedures for Hg analysis are highly sought. Wet digestion procedures for determining total mercury in different biological matrices have been established since years, however only few studies focused on planktonic samples.